Senior Staff Backend Engineer (Service Mesh)

We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.   

We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurs surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.  

Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.   

We are looking for a Sr Staff Backend Engineer who has a deep understanding of the interplay of large scale microservices and hands-on experience with Service Mesh. You will be responsible for designing the architecture and driving the team to deliver a modern platform that powers the entirety of Coupang’s services. 

The Gateway Services team is responsible for building Coupang’s infrastructure layer using a distributed microservices architecture to enable inter-service communication. Key aspects of the infrastructure layer include discovery, load balancing, traffic resiliency, traffic management, failure recovery, and observability paradigms. The job position entails the following: 

• Develop and implement enterprise-wide fine-grained traffic control. 
• Use a centralized management plane for managing policies and configurations. 
• Secure inter-service communication with mTLS encryption, identity-based authentication, and authorization. 

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer in the Gateway Services team, you will partner with leaders of multiple Platform teams. You will implement simple solutions to complex infrastructure problems, building a highly scalable, reliable, and efficient platform for our customers. You will be accountable for raising the bar on engineering and operational excellence.

In this role, you will: 

• →Build Service Mesh components collaborating actively within a tightly knit talented team. 
• →Design and implement back-end APIs using REST/Hibernate using Java SpringBoot and infrastructure components using Go. 
• →Architect workload and service management infrastructure by designing and developing critical infrastructure components. 
• →Decompose complex problems into simple, straightforward solutions following Coupang's leadership principles "Move with Urgency" and "Ruthless Prioritization". 
• →Demonstrate excellence resulting in scalable systems and services with the highest quality architecture and design. 
• →Dive deep into critical system issues, proactively addressing similar root causes, and raising the bar on Operational Excellence. 
• →Collaborate with other Coupang technical leaders to make the service extensible to unlock opportunities for innovations. 

• 13+ years of professional software development experience
• Experience in designing and implementing traffic management solutions to handle requests at scale. 
• Hands-on experience in designing and developing large scale distributed systems for at least the past 4 years. 
• Excellent development skills in Go/Java/Python with a proven track record of delivering mission critical systems. 
• Experience with cloud computing using AWS or Azure or GCP. 

• Strong experience in designing and implementing Service Mesh (Istio/Envoy) features. 
• Deep understanding of network components (virtual networks, route tables, subnets, and gateways). 
• Deep understanding of modern web applications design architecture and API design patterns with high performance and scale. 
• Ability to handle multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment and lead the delivery of large-scale services for complex business offerings. 

• Hybrid / Onsite / Remote working 

Our Hybrid work model: Coupang hybrid work model is designed to enable a culture of collaboration that acts a catalyst to enrich the experience of employees. Employees are required to work at least 3 days in the office per week, with the flexibility to work from home 2 days a week, depending on the role requirement. Some businesses may require more time in office due to nature of work.  

• Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws. 

• Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below. https://privacy.coupang.com/en/land/jobs/